Broken
I wrote this work of nonfiction on a bitterly cold January evening. Did this really happen? Yes. It was December 30 and at that time I still lived with my parents. I currently reside with my uncle. I've cataloged each event that happened to me and my family on that frozen winter night. December 30, 2009 My name is Jacob Thomson, and for the first seventeen years of my life I lived with my mother, father, and sister. My parents loved each other dearly and boasted eighteen years of a strong marriage and my sister had recently turned twelve. The best word to describe our family at that time is happy. And now I’m cutting the bullshit. My name is Jacob Thomson, and I’m an orphan. I hope the previous paragraph didn’t make you believe that this is a happy story; all of that happiness was applied in the past tense—it is the past and can never return. The Christmas decorations were in the final stages of their replacement in storage and the year of 2009 had almost concluded until some fucking asshole broke into our house. I was in my room and awaiting the arrival of New Year’s Eve as I slowly drifted off into a deep state of slumber. I assume my sister Emma had fallen asleep hours ago, but my parents were still up and awake by the time that the two hands of the clock pointed north with a chime. I heard a dreadfully loud shattering of glass and my eyelids were instantly snapped open with a sudden jolt of fear. I thought, "W''hat the hell was that?"'' I’m seventeen and wasn’t scared to abandon my bed and sleep for an investigation. I walked to my bedroom door and grasped the chilled doorknob. As I attempted to turn the brass fixture and discover what the shattering of glass was, something stopped me. My parents were screaming, and it was undeniably due to horrific fear. My hand released the doorknob with newly developed sweat upon my palm—''now'' I was scared. Those screams…they just didn’t sound right as they echoed through the hallway and terrorized my sense of hearing. Then I was hearing "No, no!" and confirmed my suspicions of disaster. And after that, "Shut the fuck up!" ''I nearly vomited in fear. It was an unfamiliar voice of aggression and it was inside my home. I could no longer contain myself in the darkness of my room—I flicked the light switch with a trembling hand and a quivering lip accompanied by tearful eyes. The tears are ''still flowing down my cheeks as I write this story more than a month later. And then a couple of gunshots…they were louder and more terrifying than the screams. I didn’t know what was being shot at, but I could still hear both of my parents screaming in terror. They were alive, but my fear refused to vanquish my body as some motherfucker was threatening my parents with a gun. I don’t know why it took so long, but then I remembered three numbers: 911. No, I do remember why it took so long…I had never felt the traumatization of terror to this brutally painful extent as I was literally frozen with fear. I forced my glaciered legs to retreat from the door and I grabbed my cellphone; this isn’t one of those stories where the phone lines are down or there’s coincidentally no signal. I had shitty reception here in the state of Montana, but I managed. I heard someone say "911," on the other end of the line and an extremely minor release of relief was within my emotions. And then more deafening gunshots followed by, "You fucking bitch!" and I could only let out a sob to the operator as the trepidation of fear overwhelmed the relief. "Hello? What’s your emergency?" Another moment of speechless gulping occurred until I could clear my throat and cry, "My house has been broken into," and I gave the operator my address, and then I waited. There were only two seconds of chronology until I heard Emma screaming my name. I dropped my only line of communication and opened the door—Emma was there and staring into the depths of the hallway. I progressed and grabbed her shoulders but it was as if she didn’t even notice me…she could only see what I tried so hard not to see…but I looked. Emma and I stared through the tunneling hallway of darkness and into the living room of which we saw our mother…and beyond her, we saw Larson McCormack. I’m not even bothering to change the names within this true story—Google Larson McCormack and see what sick and twisted fucked up shit comes up. And then just as Emma attempted to scream for our mother, the redundancy of gunshots occurred. The pistol’s barrel was aimed directly at my mother’s head and a semiautomatic firing of rounds was released. I don’t have an accurate count for the number of shots fired, but it was too fucking much. I saw my mother’s head erupt into streams of blood that twisted throughout the air and spiraled through an instant shedding of her blonde hair. I pulled Emma with so much force that her blouse had been torn and my fingernails were within her flesh. We reentered my bedroom and collapsed upon the floor. I’d never swore within the presence of my little sister until the moment I realized that my mother’s head had been severed from her body due to an excessive amount of bullets that projected from Larson McCormack's gun. I cried with a dry throat and dampened cheeks Fuck! and I knew that the criminal had saw us; two unarmed children at the end of the hallway with worried faces that had witnessed their mother’s undeserved execution. Larson McCormack would step through our doorway any moment and shoot the living shit out of both me and my sister. I inspected Emma…her breaths were wheezing and she began to cough up blood…her torso revealed a large splotch of blood that had left her body and soaked her blouse. A stray bullet from the murder of my mother had struck my little sister. Emma couldn’t even scream…she only gazed at me with dying eyes and an agape mouth of drooling blood. Why the fuck did I keep her in front of me? I still blame myself for that damned bullet that pierced her pancreas. From my experiences of fictional media, I’ve been told to apply pressure upon the wound. I did, and I could physically feel the hole within her flesh as the blood gushed from it and coated my hands like red latex. The hole was about the size of a nickel and was releasing more fluid than what seemed possible; it flowed down her chest and abdomen and pooled upon my carpet. I retained a constant rate of pressure upon my dying sister's wound as she coughed and sputtered words that I wish I understood, but it only sounded like a gargling of blood. I almost forgot about Larson McCormack, but then I heard my father shouting with a deepened voice that boomed an escalation of decibels, "Fuck you! Fuck you!" Then another shattering of glass in addition to thuds and cracks and other indescribable onomatopoeias that reached my ringing ears as a struggle of which pertained to my father. The profanity continued as I watched Emma with despair and remembered the 911 call—I reached for the phone and the operator was still online. They’re trained to never hang-up on one who is requiring assistance. "I need an ambulance! My sister’s been shot," and the words rolled off my tongue and spilled from my mouth with a foul and revolting taste of disgusting horror. I never believed that those words would’ve ever been said. A dispatch was developed, but no one had arrived. I’d estimate that it’d only been minutes since the call, but within those minutes my mother had been killed and my sister had been shot. Another thirty seconds and my father would probably be dead too. Then I heard, "Jacob! Emma!" I temporarily abandoned my sister with hopes of rescuing my father from whatever terrorizing dangers he was concealed in. The noises had settled and I approached the living room with hopes of Larson McCormack’s termination and I hoped it’d be as violent and demented as my mother’s assassination. I eventually entered the same room of which held my father and Larson McCormack…my stomach had been turned inside out and my heart was electrically stimulated by a rapidly malignant digestion of fear. I stood inches away from my mother’s bloody and decapitated corpse and glared at the murderer who stood within the debris of broken glass and furniture. He held a gun with its barrel pressed against my father’s forehead, and then Larson McCormack pulled the trigger. And then I, Jacob Thomson, was converted into an orphan as I watched my father’s skull exit through the back of his cranium. I felt the splatters of blood land upon my face and I realized that both of my parents were now deceased due to the brutality of grotesquely vicious violence. The bullet was point-blank as it speared my father’s forehead and annihilated his brains, removing the upper portion of his head. All that remained was his jaw that presented his lower row of teeth as they dangled from his unsupported neck. I saw the top of his spine and blood was profusely spewing onto the ceiling instead of being redirected into his brain of which was now smeared across the room. And then my adrenaline exploded through my pulse with vengeance—I didn’t know where the police and paramedics were, but they were somewhere other than within my family’s household. I’ve never participated in a football game, but I tackled Larson McCormack with so much force that I dislocated my shoulder. I didn’t give a shit about the pain because I had already felt the maximum excruciation of a broken heart. Larson McCormack dropped his gun and collapsed upon the shattered glass as I was mounted on top of his chest with fire in my eyes. He had broken into the house through the window, and I grasped the shards of glass within my hands and began to repeatedly stab him. I finished what my father had started. "Fuck you! Fuck you!" Even with a dislocated shoulder I used both arms and both hands to thrust the sharpened fragments of glass into his face. After one particular incision traveled into his mouth and down into his throat, the glass shard broke upon impact and was lodged within his esophagus. Larson McCormack (unfortunately) suffered very little; another shard of broken glass was lunged into his throat and tore the flesh into a fillet of excessively bleeding skin. That was the death of the fucking asshole who killed my family. But I wasn’t done. I treated the cadaver with so much disrespect as I continued to pick up the broken glass and implant it into his head. The blood had squirted from his gashes and onto my face, but I took no notice as I treated him like a taxidermist’s project and was stuffing the body with glass as I heard the broken fragments crumble within his head and a pleasurable viewing of a mutilated face lied before me, with jagged edges of glass jutting from its entire surface area. And then finally the authorities entered the house and its crime scene and pried my bloody and wounded hands from the body. There were massive pieces of broken glass beneath the flesh of my palms, but I didn’t feel any physical pain; it was entirely overwhelmed by the emotional pain. I always believed that’ll never happen to me, but my beliefs were massacred with the disproven hypotheses of an enjoyable life that would only end by natural causes—not by fucking Larson McCormack. The next morning I saw my house and its broken window on the news—the anchor’s description wasn’t nearly enough detailed as to what I had witnessed. It was simply referred to as shot in the head and the listening audience was given the largest understatement in history. My mother and father were dead and Emma had died in the hospital due to severe blood loss from her punctured vital organ. I was fostered into my bachelor uncle’s care and my life had ended as my habits evolved into drugs and alcohol while I coped with an abusive guardian. But there is not enough weed or wine coolers in the world to allow me to live on with my family’s death that began with a broken window and ended with a broken heart. The new year was only a continuation of my life of which was now undesired. I slit my wrist daily, and one of these days I’m going to let it bleed a little longer than usual…and I will become reunited with my family. Jacob Thomson Category:Dismemberment